{ pfsb } by the fireside

[for_tradition]

A fireside – the proper kind, with the scent and crackle of flames as they transmogrify the passive energy of wood into heat and light – is something one just really can't have without wood to burn. 

The swimming fish are an added bonus, but really don't lend much to the ambience beyond novelty. 

It's very pleasant to sit by this fireside, real or magicked up as it might be, while ferociously taking notes. The warm, flickering light of the flames reflects off Abigail Pent's smooth brown hair and the silk of her skirts – the rich brown of excellent milk chocolate, struck through with gold – and illuminates her neat, slightly cramped handwriting. So engrossed is she that when the waitrat arrives with her ordered tea, she doesn't notice until the creature gives a polite half-cough, half-squeak.

Glancing up, she peers myopically at the proffered tea set. (She is wearing two sets of spectacles, but forgotten to put either over her eyes. One sits lightly on her hair, the other hangs around her neck off a cord of brown silk.)

"That doesn't look right," she tells the waitrat. It certainly is tea, but the stunted white pot and small, handle-less cups don't look at all like the bone china she'd expected.

She looks about, searching – ah. Getting to her feet in a rustle of fabric, she accepts the tray from the waitrat and makes her way over to the table she'd spotted, where a tall, slim young man has received a bone china tea service and plate of iced biscuits. "Pardon me," Abigail says, smiling as she approaches him. "I believe our orders were switched."

Comments

[for_tradition]

Her warm brown eyes twinkle at him.

"Then there are those mad heretics who still believe in the place beyond the River," she says, cheerfully. "I'm afraid it's gone quite out of style, but I have to admit that now I'm dead, I believe more fervently than ever."

[lightamidchaos]

"What is the place beyond the River?"

It almost feels rude to ask, but she clearly does not seem upset in the slightest at discussing such things, despite her own state.

[for_tradition]

"I don't know," she says, with rapturous delight. "Not a very satisfying answer, I know – but I intend to find out."

[lightamidchaos]

That delight at the possibility of discovery, at the presence of a question to be answered or a mystery to be solved - it rings very, very familiar. Lan Wangji is unconscious of the tiny smile that touches the corner of his mouth.

"Then I wish you luck. Is there assistance I might offer?"

[for_tradition]

"Really?

She looks pleased and a little amused. "Why, are you a mad heretic, too?"

[lightamidchaos]

He can practically hear his uncle's denunciation ringing in his ears as the blows of the discipline whip fell on his back; he can taste the memory of blood in his mouth as he had refused to remain silent.

(I dare ask you, shufu - who is right? who is wrong?)

"Perhaps," he murmurs. "But I am sure of one thing, and that is that often those who claim absolute knowledge do not wish to hear other possibilities. It does not make them right."

[for_tradition]

"Oh, I like you," Abigail says, warmly. "Who wants absolute knowledge, anyway, when learning is half the fun?"

She says this with perfect sincerity as she dips a biscuit into her tea, before taking a satisfied bite.

[lightamidchaos]

The shell of his ear flushes faintest pink again. "Mn. I have heard others say something similar - about learning," he hastens to clarify.

[for_tradition]

"Of course."

She finishes her biscuit and delicately wipes her lips with a napkin. "And you, Hanguang-jun? Do you have a speciality?"

[lightamidchaos]

"Musical cultivation. Inquiry, the melody I mentioned before, and others as well," he explains.

[for_tradition]

"I'd be very interested to see your musical cultivation in action," Abigail tells him, looking as though that would be the best thing that could ever happen to her.

"Could I beg a demonstration at some point?"

[lightamidchaos]

"I would be glad to play for you," he says. Tranquility should be safe, spirit or not, and Clarity if properly managed, which he is certainly capable of doing.

"Even now, if you wish."

[for_tradition]

"Oh, no," she demurs. "Certainly it can wait until after we've had our tea, or even later still. Perhaps, in the meantime, you'd favor me with some discussion on the technique?"

[lightamidchaos]

"Of course," he says, and looks thoughtful for a moment as he considers. "You mentioned speaking with another thalergetic adept. A cultivator?"

[for_tradition]

"No," Abigail tells him, and looks thoughtful. "What was the term she used...? Oh, Aes Sedai."

[lightamidchaos]

“Mn.” Somehow, he manages to keep from letting out the deep sigh of frustration that wants to escape. “Then you will not have discussed core formation.”

[for_tradition]

She gives him an interested glance. "You are correct," she tells him. "But I would love to, now. What is 'core formation'?"

[lightamidchaos]

“A cultivator cultivates qi,” he explains. “It is the energy in all things; what you call thalergy, I believe. A cultivator draws it from the world around them, allowing it to flow through their meridians and into their dantian, where it is concentrated and refined into a golden core.”

He holds one hand in the air above his center. “The strength of a cultivator’s core affects what they are able to do with it.”

[for_tradition]

"I see," she says, paying attention with the sort of unblinking, intent focus that comes of a lifetime of spending her days with books and bones. "Yes, that makes sense. The thanergy for a necromantic adept's workings, generally speaking, cannot be from themselves, for obvious reasons."

She gestures to the window, the always-recurring death outside. "In our home system, we draw thanergy directly from the planets which host the Houses. Outside Dominicus, in thalergetic systems, necromancers rely on active deaths to bolster their thanergy reserves."

[lightamidchaos]

"Or resentful energy," Lan Wangji says, with deep, deep certainty. "In a 'thalergetic system.' Much of which is of course generated by the ghosts of those who have died with resentment. But it does not mean that one who walks that path must themselves cause those deaths."

[for_tradition]

"That is true," Abigail agrees. "I believe the traditional approach of the Cohort is for the front-lines of the Second and Fourth to provide the initial thanergetic bloom for other House necromancers to utilize."

[lightamidchaos]

He thinks of the Sunshot Campaign, of Wen Ruohan's corpse puppets created of formerly-living people, of the thousands of dead at Nightless City. A thanergetic bloom, indeed. His jaw tightens, just a little.

"Are you at war?"

[for_tradition]

"Now that is a complicated question."

Finished, for the moment, with her snack, she sets her small plate aside. "The Emperor Undying is at war, and the Cohort of the Nine Houses is his army. The Fifth is not at war, except in the sense that many of our people join the Cohort and thus fight in a war."

[lightamidchaos]

He nods, absorbing that. "At war with whom?"

[for_tradition]

"I understand the war is being fought on multiple fronts," she says. "There are several rebel groups pushing back against the Empire."